* To describe working configurations of OpenStack (which code branches work together? what do config files look like for those branches?)
* To make it easier for developers to dive into OpenStack so that they can productively contribute without having to understand every part of the system at once
IMPORTANT: Be sure to carefully read `stack.sh` and any other scripts you execute before you run them, as they install software and may alter your networking configuration. We strongly recommend that you run `stack.sh` in a clean and disposable vm when you are first getting started.
The devstack master branch generally points to trunk versions of OpenStack components. For older, stable versions, look for branches named stable/[release] in the DevStack repo. For example, you can do the following to create a diablo OpenStack cloud:
You can also pick specific OpenStack project releases by setting the appropriate `*_BRANCH` variables in `localrc` (look in `stackrc` for the default set). Usually just before a release there will be milestone-proposed branches that need to be tested::
You can override environment variables used in `stack.sh` by creating file name `localrc`. It is likely that you will need to do this to tweak your networking configuration should you need to access your cloud from a different host.
By default Swift will configure 3 replicas (and one spare) which could be IO intensive on a small vm, if you only want to do some quick testing of the API you can choose to only have one replica by customizing the variable `SWIFT_REPLICAS` in your `localrc`.